Hey, wait a minute! It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas for twelve whole days in the church! What happened to the baby, the angels? Where’s the manger? Why, on the day after Christmas, are we hearing the prologue to the Gospel of John? Well, lest we get too mushy and sentimental, lest we focus too much on that adorable baby and his gracious mother, the prologue to John’s Gospel helps us to understand the meaning of the Christmas event. As you know, John’s Gospel is very different from those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The writer of this Gospel especially wanted us to understand Jesus’ true identity as God’s Son, and so there’s more explicit theology in this Gospel than in the others. The first eighteen verses, which you just heard, summarize the Gospel for us. And if there’s one verse that summarizes the whole prologue, it’s this one: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.” That’s it. That’s the whole Gospel in a nutshell.
Sometimes it’s hard to hear the power in a sentence like that. If we’ve been church members a long time, perhaps the words are too familiar to have any punch left. Or if we’re relative newcomers, perhaps the words are so strange that they have little meaning. So let’s hear these words differently. Some of you know that I like an alternative translation of the Bible. It’s Eugene Peterson’s The Message. So let’s hear how Peterson renders this verse: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.”
I love that translation. The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. When I hear the word “neighborhood,” I think of the neighborhood where I grew up and the people there. Think for a minute about where you grew up. Picture it: the people, the houses, your school, your friends, what you did after school. [Query the congregation.] All of us grew up in different neighborhoods, some in rural areas, some in cities, but we can all remember real people living real lives. When I think of “neighborhood,” I think of Levittown, New York. Some of you know that Levittown was built between 1947 and 1951 as the first planned community. That’s where I grew up, and I can still see the modest houses lining both sides of winding streets. I remember the families of postal workers, like my own father, police officers, secretaries, nurses, construction workers, teachers, sales people, and accountants. The father of one of my friends was even a seaman in the Merchant Marine, and he came home only every six months! I remember my friends, almost all of whom lived on my street and rode to school with me. After school and in the summers we kids played tag, or stick ball, or hide-and-seek in the streets, or perhaps we cruised around the neighborhood on our bicycles. “The Word was made flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”
The Word was made flesh and blood and moved onto Elbow Lane. The quarters were pretty tight in his house, and his folks didn’t have a lot of money for extras. Hardly where you’d expect the Son of God to turn up. But Jesus moved in anyway. Jesus became one of us. When the Word moved into our neighborhood, he had a special aura about him, a something that everyone could see. He was generous inside and out. He was giving and loving to all of us, no matter who we were. He wasn’t generous and loving because he was trying to impress us or because he wanted to curry favor with those in power. There wasn’t anyone like that in our neighborhood anyway. He was generous and loving because being generous and giving was part of his true nature, the nature he had inherited from God the Father. And he was “true from start to finish.” He had integrity, honesty, and wholeness. He was faithful and sincere, complete and undivided, true from beginning to end. What was most important, he showed us, by who he was, something about God. Because the Word loved us so much, we realized deep in our hearts that God truly loves us. He was – and still is – the best possible neighbor.
And the Word wants to get know us better. He want us to know him well. He doesn’t want to be one of those neighbors we nod to as we head out the door, perhaps only exchanging at best a hurried “How are you?” He wants us to become good friends, just like those best friends we had when we were children. And because he’s such a wonderful neighbor, we want to get to know him too. Do you want to do that? Do you want a closer relationship with him? We’re about to start a new secular year. Instead of your usual New Year’s resolutions, try these: developing a richer, fuller friendship with the Word, through studying the stories of his life, regularly partaking of his Body and Blood in the sacrament, praying, and taking care of all his friends, rich and poor alike.
Because the truth is that Jesus is everyone’s best possible neighbor. Jesus still moves into every neighborhood, from rural farm communities to urban inner cities, from Fifth Avenue to Harlem, from trailer parks to McMansion-land, from Darfur to Dubai. The Word dwells with all of us, whoever we are and wherever we live. And because we know how much he loves us, and because we’ve signed on to his program through baptism and confirmation, we often feel called to follow him wherever he goes, perhaps even into some of those neighborhoods where we don’t feel entirely safe.
I recently read Kent Annan’s book, Following Jesus through the Eye of a Needle. After working with refugees in Eastern Europe, Kent went with his wife Shelley to Haiti in 2003. Kent and Shelley literally followed the Word into the neighborhood. First they spent seven months in rural Haiti living in one room in a small family house. They learned Creole, interacted with their host-family and neighbors, and began to understand how Haitian people live and think. After that, they went to Port au Prince to begin working in non-profit organizations. They could have lived in one of the affluent neighborhoods that foreigners typically live in. Instead, they moved onto one of the mud-covered hills surrounding Port au Prince, into a neighborhood accessible only on foot. They spent many months having a simple house built, a two-room affair, built, in the Haitian way, of concrete, with minimal electricity. They lived side by side with their Haitian neighbors, entering their lives as fully as possible. They only moved back to Florida when Shelley became pregnant. Kent has since founded Haiti Partners to foster education in Haiti and still travels regularly to Haiti. Kent and Shelley followed the Word into the neighborhood.
To what neighborhoods has the Word already gone ahead of us? Into what neighborhoods is the Word asking us to follow him? Are there places even here in Gallipolis where the Word has already gone and is expecting us to follow him? Are there places where we, who have caught a glimpse of God’s great love for us, are called to share that love with others?
Ultimately, that is what this Gospel is all about. Yes, God is powerful. Yes, God created us. But what we need to remember most is that God comes into the neighborhood, your neighborhood and mine, because God loves us. Love and compassion bring God into the neighborhood. The Word was born out of God’s love for us. It is this love for which I am so immensely grateful. It is in praise of this love that I can sing with all my heart, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come.” Joy to the world, the Word has moved into the neighborhood.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
God Took a Risk
Well, what would you have done? What would you have done if you were Joseph? He was betrothed to Mary. He didn’t know her well, but their families had arranged it all. First there was the engagement, then there was the betrothal ceremony that sealed the promises made in the engagement. She was now the right age, fourteen or so. Even though he and Mary were still living with their own families – they would start living together a year after the betrothal -- they were truly promised to each other, really they were as good as already married. Now what? Mary is pregnant for Pete’s sake! And by whom? She can’t say. The baby isn’t Joseph’s, that’s for sure.
What do you suppose Joseph felt? What would you have felt? Wouldn’t Joseph have been outraged? At Mary for doing this to him? At whoever did it with her? Wouldn’t he have been embarrassed? My God, the shame! People would think that either Joseph couldn’t control himself until the actual wedding, or that he’d let himself be betrayed. And how could he raise a child that everyone knew wasn’t his? And then mixed in with the rage and embarrassment, wouldn’t Joseph also have felt deep grief? Grief for the life with Mary that he had been so joyfully expecting? Grief for Mary, for what would await her as an unmarried mother? Why had she done this? And, my God, what was she feeling? Wasn’t she embarrassed too? Was she sorry about what she’d done? Knowing her, most probably she was terrified about what would happen next.
O Mary! O God, what should he do? The law about pregnancy before marriage was harsh. If Joseph remembered correctly, it said something like, “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death…” (Deut. 22:23-24). Should he tell people what she had done? But then what? What would happen to her? Maybe he should just divorce her quietly and let her go to her cousin Elizabeth’s house? Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? As Joseph lay in bed that night, tossing and turning, all his thoughts and feelings swirled around in his head. What should he do? What should he do?
O.K. Let’s stop right there. Let’s think about this. [Turning to the right side of the church] You people, on this side, I want you to think about all the options that Mary had in this situation. Here she was pregnant before marriage, and her fiancé wasn’t the father. What might she have done? [Turning to the left side of the church] Now you folks, on this side, I want you to think about the options that Joseph had in this situation. What could he have done? And both groups: is there anything either of them could have done, or the two of them together, that the Gospel story doesn’t mention? Take a minute or two to think about the various possibilities. [Then query each side as to what they came up with.]
Well, there were some other possibilities, weren’t there? However, we know how Scripture tells us the story came out. In the midst of his tossing and turning, Joseph had a vivid sensation of a visit from a presence. Maybe it was dream, who knows? The presence told him not to do any of the things he’d initially considered, or that were perhaps possible, but to go through with the marriage, and adopt this child as his own. And he did just that. And more. Some months after the child was born, and after those strange eastern politicians had come and gone, Joseph took Mary and the child to safety in Egypt and then later on even brought them safely back home to Nazareth. Was he there for the totally unexpected end to this strange child’s life thirty-three years later? We don’t know. Mary was there, but we don’t know about Joseph. We do know that Joseph followed through on what God had asked of him in this part of the story, and that he played his part with faith, mercy, and courage.
It didn’t have to be that way. God took a risk. God has always taken risks with creation and with human beings, with us unstable and undependable creatures. Think of some of the major players in the Old Testament stories: stuttering Moses, fleeing Jonah, too-young Jeremiah, Rahab the prostitute, Ruth the Moabite Gentile. In making the choice take our flesh, to become one of us, to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, God really took a risk. From first to last, this story is God’s story, but the fulfillment of the story needed the human actors. And God took the risk of depending on human beings to do their part. Scripture makes it look easy for them, but it wasn’t. These aren’t fairy stories. I’d bet there was plenty of tossing and turning for all these people. Fortunately, for God, and, more importantly, for us, the human actors in this story and the others did what God might have hoped they would: they let the Holy Spirit work through them, they accepted God’s plan, and they faithfully carried it out.
Does God still want to work through us risky and undependable human beings to accomplish God’s saving will in the world? Absolutely! Consider this. In about 1350 a group of Jews living in Barcelona had a haggadah made. The haggadah is the book of the liturgy for the Passover Seder, the ritual meal. This particular haggadah was beautifully illustrated with thirty-four scenes from Scripture, and it was lovingly bound in fine calfskin. By God’s grace, and with human cooperation, it also survived many close calls with destruction. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, someone managed to smuggle it out. Some marginal notes show that it was in Italy in the 16th century. Again to save it, someone then smuggled it into the Ottoman Empire, where Jews were welcome. Then a man named Joseph Kohen sold it to the National Museum in Sarajevo in 1894. During World War II, the chief librarian of the museum, a Muslim named Dervis Korkut, risked his own life and saved the haggadah from the Nazis by smuggling it out of Sarajevo. Korkut gave it to a Muslim cleric who hid it under the floorboards of a mosque. When Serb forces broke into the museum during the war in Bosnia in the early ‘90s, the haggadah was nearly trashed. However, a local Muslim police inspector, Fahrudin Cebo, made sure it survived by hiding it in an underground bank vault. The haggadah was finally restored in 2001, and has been on permanent display at the museum since December, 2002. But it didn’t have to work out that way, did it? By God’s grace, undependable human beings, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, helped to keep alive a service book for the liturgy that defines the Jews as a people, and for that reason alone, is also important to us as Jesus’ disciples.
Can we think of similar examples from our own lives? Can we think of examples of God’s taking the risk to work God’s will through human beings, perhaps even through people who at first glance might not even seem up to doing anything at all for God? I invite you thinki of people that you know. [Pause.] As I look around this church, at the windows and the memorial plaques, I know for a fact that God has been working through risky, undependable human beings, people who could done anything else with their resources but invest them here, in keeping this parish alive. And somehow those people rose to the challenge and generously supported this church. Do we know their stories? Do we appreciate how God worked through them? Will we let God work through us as well?
It’s not a sure thing, is it? God acted marvelously in taking human flesh and coming among us. But the human actors in God’s story also had to show faith, mercy, and courage. As do we, when God shows up in our lives. Make no mistake, God may ask us to do something unexpected. Perhaps we’ll be resistant, angry, embarrassed, sorrowful, perplexed, or all of the above. Perhaps we’ll toss and turn and wonder what we should do. But perhaps when we ponder the story of Mary and Joseph, we can imagine ourselves also acting courageously, even when we really feel like cowards inside. We can trust God’s promises and take the first step forward in faith. When we do respond to God’s requests with faith and trust, even if we’re not sure what’s coming next, God will be with us, God will do the rest, and God will be able to accomplish God’s will through us. Thanks be to God!
What do you suppose Joseph felt? What would you have felt? Wouldn’t Joseph have been outraged? At Mary for doing this to him? At whoever did it with her? Wouldn’t he have been embarrassed? My God, the shame! People would think that either Joseph couldn’t control himself until the actual wedding, or that he’d let himself be betrayed. And how could he raise a child that everyone knew wasn’t his? And then mixed in with the rage and embarrassment, wouldn’t Joseph also have felt deep grief? Grief for the life with Mary that he had been so joyfully expecting? Grief for Mary, for what would await her as an unmarried mother? Why had she done this? And, my God, what was she feeling? Wasn’t she embarrassed too? Was she sorry about what she’d done? Knowing her, most probably she was terrified about what would happen next.
O Mary! O God, what should he do? The law about pregnancy before marriage was harsh. If Joseph remembered correctly, it said something like, “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death…” (Deut. 22:23-24). Should he tell people what she had done? But then what? What would happen to her? Maybe he should just divorce her quietly and let her go to her cousin Elizabeth’s house? Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? As Joseph lay in bed that night, tossing and turning, all his thoughts and feelings swirled around in his head. What should he do? What should he do?
O.K. Let’s stop right there. Let’s think about this. [Turning to the right side of the church] You people, on this side, I want you to think about all the options that Mary had in this situation. Here she was pregnant before marriage, and her fiancé wasn’t the father. What might she have done? [Turning to the left side of the church] Now you folks, on this side, I want you to think about the options that Joseph had in this situation. What could he have done? And both groups: is there anything either of them could have done, or the two of them together, that the Gospel story doesn’t mention? Take a minute or two to think about the various possibilities. [Then query each side as to what they came up with.]
Well, there were some other possibilities, weren’t there? However, we know how Scripture tells us the story came out. In the midst of his tossing and turning, Joseph had a vivid sensation of a visit from a presence. Maybe it was dream, who knows? The presence told him not to do any of the things he’d initially considered, or that were perhaps possible, but to go through with the marriage, and adopt this child as his own. And he did just that. And more. Some months after the child was born, and after those strange eastern politicians had come and gone, Joseph took Mary and the child to safety in Egypt and then later on even brought them safely back home to Nazareth. Was he there for the totally unexpected end to this strange child’s life thirty-three years later? We don’t know. Mary was there, but we don’t know about Joseph. We do know that Joseph followed through on what God had asked of him in this part of the story, and that he played his part with faith, mercy, and courage.
It didn’t have to be that way. God took a risk. God has always taken risks with creation and with human beings, with us unstable and undependable creatures. Think of some of the major players in the Old Testament stories: stuttering Moses, fleeing Jonah, too-young Jeremiah, Rahab the prostitute, Ruth the Moabite Gentile. In making the choice take our flesh, to become one of us, to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, God really took a risk. From first to last, this story is God’s story, but the fulfillment of the story needed the human actors. And God took the risk of depending on human beings to do their part. Scripture makes it look easy for them, but it wasn’t. These aren’t fairy stories. I’d bet there was plenty of tossing and turning for all these people. Fortunately, for God, and, more importantly, for us, the human actors in this story and the others did what God might have hoped they would: they let the Holy Spirit work through them, they accepted God’s plan, and they faithfully carried it out.
Does God still want to work through us risky and undependable human beings to accomplish God’s saving will in the world? Absolutely! Consider this. In about 1350 a group of Jews living in Barcelona had a haggadah made. The haggadah is the book of the liturgy for the Passover Seder, the ritual meal. This particular haggadah was beautifully illustrated with thirty-four scenes from Scripture, and it was lovingly bound in fine calfskin. By God’s grace, and with human cooperation, it also survived many close calls with destruction. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, someone managed to smuggle it out. Some marginal notes show that it was in Italy in the 16th century. Again to save it, someone then smuggled it into the Ottoman Empire, where Jews were welcome. Then a man named Joseph Kohen sold it to the National Museum in Sarajevo in 1894. During World War II, the chief librarian of the museum, a Muslim named Dervis Korkut, risked his own life and saved the haggadah from the Nazis by smuggling it out of Sarajevo. Korkut gave it to a Muslim cleric who hid it under the floorboards of a mosque. When Serb forces broke into the museum during the war in Bosnia in the early ‘90s, the haggadah was nearly trashed. However, a local Muslim police inspector, Fahrudin Cebo, made sure it survived by hiding it in an underground bank vault. The haggadah was finally restored in 2001, and has been on permanent display at the museum since December, 2002. But it didn’t have to work out that way, did it? By God’s grace, undependable human beings, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, helped to keep alive a service book for the liturgy that defines the Jews as a people, and for that reason alone, is also important to us as Jesus’ disciples.
Can we think of similar examples from our own lives? Can we think of examples of God’s taking the risk to work God’s will through human beings, perhaps even through people who at first glance might not even seem up to doing anything at all for God? I invite you thinki of people that you know. [Pause.] As I look around this church, at the windows and the memorial plaques, I know for a fact that God has been working through risky, undependable human beings, people who could done anything else with their resources but invest them here, in keeping this parish alive. And somehow those people rose to the challenge and generously supported this church. Do we know their stories? Do we appreciate how God worked through them? Will we let God work through us as well?
It’s not a sure thing, is it? God acted marvelously in taking human flesh and coming among us. But the human actors in God’s story also had to show faith, mercy, and courage. As do we, when God shows up in our lives. Make no mistake, God may ask us to do something unexpected. Perhaps we’ll be resistant, angry, embarrassed, sorrowful, perplexed, or all of the above. Perhaps we’ll toss and turn and wonder what we should do. But perhaps when we ponder the story of Mary and Joseph, we can imagine ourselves also acting courageously, even when we really feel like cowards inside. We can trust God’s promises and take the first step forward in faith. When we do respond to God’s requests with faith and trust, even if we’re not sure what’s coming next, God will be with us, God will do the rest, and God will be able to accomplish God’s will through us. Thanks be to God!
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Therefore Be Patient
In 1887 Bishop Henry Codman Potter of the Episcopal Diocese of New York called for the building of a cathedral that would rival St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Roman Catholic cathedral in mid-town Manhattan. Land was found in upper Manhattan, architects created plans for a magnificent Byzantine-Romanesque building, and ground was broken on December 27, 1892, St. John’s day. Little by little the great cathdral of St. John the Divine rose up: first the massive foundation, then the crypt in 1899, then the great central dome in 1909. Excavations for the nave began in 1925, and the building was first opened end to end on November 30, 1941, a week before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Work on the cathedral stopped almost immediately and didn’t begin again until 1979, when Bishop Paul Moore decided that construction should be resumed, in part to help neighborhood youths by training them in the crafts of stonemasonry. Construction halted again in 1997, and in 2001 fire destroyed part of the organ and the as yet unfinished north transept. Following a massive restoration begun in January 2005, the cathedral was finally rededicated on Sunday, November 30, 2008. Construction and restoration of the cathedral continue, and many affectionately call it “St. John the Unfinished.”
What, a cathedral still unfinished after more than one hundred years? Of course, some of the great European cathedrals took as much or even more time to build, and builders, patrons, monarchs, and all those watching their construction knew that foresight, vision, and patience were all needed to fully realize such magnificent buildings. Perhaps those cathedral builders, perhaps even the builders of St. John the Divine in New York, took to heart the command to “be patient,” that we heard in today’s reading from the Letter of James. Were you startled to hear that command? We Americans are not patient people. We want everything fast and faster. We grumble when the supermarket line has more than three people in it. And now all around us the world has raced to the manger and is celebrating Christmas. Of course, the stores have been celebrating Christmas since before Halloween! But now everywhere the Christmas trees are up, and houses are decorated. In our neighboring churches, choirs are singing Christmas cantatas and hosting Christmas parties. Unlike the world around us, we Episcopalians stubbornly cling to an ancient liturgical calendar and keep Advent – at least on this side of the red doors! Why are we being so deliberately counter-cultural? Why haven’t we raced to the manger along with everyone else? Do we want to ensure the sure and certain demise of our church?
I believe there is a deeper reason why we stubbornly keep Advent, and part of that deeper reason is to be found in James’ counsel. Advent is a time of waiting. What are waiting for? Certainly, we wait – as eagerly as small children sometimes – for the celebration of God’s first coming among us in Jesus. I still like Advent calendars, those loyal companions in the countdown to Christmas Eve. But in Advent the church also asks us to look further ahead, to look beyond ourselves, to have the patience of a cathedral builder who knew that the great building would not be finished in one lifetime. The church asks us to look ahead to the full realization of God’s promises, the completion of the renewal of creation begun in Jesus. And the church also counsels us to cultivate that most important of Christian virtues, patience. The church asks us to live in both uncertainty and hope, waiting patiently for God to bring God’s plans to fulfillment in God’s good time.
In his plea for patience “until the coming of the Lord,” James uses agricultural imagery. He reminds us that we are like farmers who must wait until both the early and late rains have arrived, that the fulfillment of God’s promises is not under our control, but that the green shoots of God’s promises will indeed in God’s good time be fully mature. God’s time is not our time, James implies, and God’s “soon” does not mean “tomorrow,” or even “next week.” Indeed, if you think of the age of the earth, of time from God’s perspective, the time between Jesus’ birth and today is a mere blip! Patiently waiting for God’s fulfillment of God’s plans is not easy, and so James also counsels strength of heart. Now just as our physical hearts need exercise in order to stay strong, so do our spiritual hearts. Certainly, we cultivate spiritual strength through regular prayer and worship. But, James tells us, what is more important, is that we cultivate strength of heart through patient acceptance of each other. “Do not grumble against each other,” he commands. In being patient with one another, we also show forth Christ, who accepted all. Finally, if we would know what patient waiting looked like, James suggests that we take the prophets as our models. We have been hearing their voices this Advent, haven’t we, especially those of Isaiah and John the Baptist. We have been hearing their call to hope, and we have seen their visions of a return to Jerusalem of the “ransomed of the Lord” and of a renewed creation. We know that they patiently endured the wrath and imprisonment of those in power who didn’t want to hear their preaching, and we are asked to follow their example.
Now it is unlikely that any of us will be imprisoned or beheaded for speaking about our faith. However, as disciples of Jesus we are commanded to remain as faithful to God’s promises as the exemplary folks of Scripture, or even of our own families, who courageously spoke in God’s name. One writer tells of her grandfather, who worked for justice and once risked his life for a black friend in the segregated South. When the civil rights laws were finally passed, he had been long gone, but during his lifetime he did his best to nurture those green shoots of the hope for racial justice that had poked up through the soil around him.
And so it is for us. As faithful disciples of the one who died and rose again, we too commit ourselves to patient, faithful waiting, to speaking God’s truth, and to envisioning a renewed world truly realized. Especially in this busy, noisy season, when most of those around us have forgotten the need for patience, we take to heart James’ counsel: “be patient until the coming of the Lord.” Shutting your ears for the moment to the clamor of premature Christmas carols, I invite you to hear again James’ words to us, as Brahms set them in his great German Requiem (played for congregation on ipod):
So seid nun geduldig, liebe Brüder, Be patient therefore, brethren,
bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn. unto the coming of the Lord.
Siehe, ein Ackermann wartet Behold, the husbandman waiteth
auf die köstliche Frucht der Erde for the precious fruit of the earth,
und ist geduldig darüber, and has long patience for it,
bis er empfahe den Morgenregen und until he receive the morning and evening Abendregen. rain.
So seid geduldig. Jakobus 5:7 Be patient therefore. James 5:7
So seid nun geduldig. So therefore be patient. And by God’s grace, we are indeed patient, as we live in love until the coming of the Lord.
What, a cathedral still unfinished after more than one hundred years? Of course, some of the great European cathedrals took as much or even more time to build, and builders, patrons, monarchs, and all those watching their construction knew that foresight, vision, and patience were all needed to fully realize such magnificent buildings. Perhaps those cathedral builders, perhaps even the builders of St. John the Divine in New York, took to heart the command to “be patient,” that we heard in today’s reading from the Letter of James. Were you startled to hear that command? We Americans are not patient people. We want everything fast and faster. We grumble when the supermarket line has more than three people in it. And now all around us the world has raced to the manger and is celebrating Christmas. Of course, the stores have been celebrating Christmas since before Halloween! But now everywhere the Christmas trees are up, and houses are decorated. In our neighboring churches, choirs are singing Christmas cantatas and hosting Christmas parties. Unlike the world around us, we Episcopalians stubbornly cling to an ancient liturgical calendar and keep Advent – at least on this side of the red doors! Why are we being so deliberately counter-cultural? Why haven’t we raced to the manger along with everyone else? Do we want to ensure the sure and certain demise of our church?
I believe there is a deeper reason why we stubbornly keep Advent, and part of that deeper reason is to be found in James’ counsel. Advent is a time of waiting. What are waiting for? Certainly, we wait – as eagerly as small children sometimes – for the celebration of God’s first coming among us in Jesus. I still like Advent calendars, those loyal companions in the countdown to Christmas Eve. But in Advent the church also asks us to look further ahead, to look beyond ourselves, to have the patience of a cathedral builder who knew that the great building would not be finished in one lifetime. The church asks us to look ahead to the full realization of God’s promises, the completion of the renewal of creation begun in Jesus. And the church also counsels us to cultivate that most important of Christian virtues, patience. The church asks us to live in both uncertainty and hope, waiting patiently for God to bring God’s plans to fulfillment in God’s good time.
In his plea for patience “until the coming of the Lord,” James uses agricultural imagery. He reminds us that we are like farmers who must wait until both the early and late rains have arrived, that the fulfillment of God’s promises is not under our control, but that the green shoots of God’s promises will indeed in God’s good time be fully mature. God’s time is not our time, James implies, and God’s “soon” does not mean “tomorrow,” or even “next week.” Indeed, if you think of the age of the earth, of time from God’s perspective, the time between Jesus’ birth and today is a mere blip! Patiently waiting for God’s fulfillment of God’s plans is not easy, and so James also counsels strength of heart. Now just as our physical hearts need exercise in order to stay strong, so do our spiritual hearts. Certainly, we cultivate spiritual strength through regular prayer and worship. But, James tells us, what is more important, is that we cultivate strength of heart through patient acceptance of each other. “Do not grumble against each other,” he commands. In being patient with one another, we also show forth Christ, who accepted all. Finally, if we would know what patient waiting looked like, James suggests that we take the prophets as our models. We have been hearing their voices this Advent, haven’t we, especially those of Isaiah and John the Baptist. We have been hearing their call to hope, and we have seen their visions of a return to Jerusalem of the “ransomed of the Lord” and of a renewed creation. We know that they patiently endured the wrath and imprisonment of those in power who didn’t want to hear their preaching, and we are asked to follow their example.
Now it is unlikely that any of us will be imprisoned or beheaded for speaking about our faith. However, as disciples of Jesus we are commanded to remain as faithful to God’s promises as the exemplary folks of Scripture, or even of our own families, who courageously spoke in God’s name. One writer tells of her grandfather, who worked for justice and once risked his life for a black friend in the segregated South. When the civil rights laws were finally passed, he had been long gone, but during his lifetime he did his best to nurture those green shoots of the hope for racial justice that had poked up through the soil around him.
And so it is for us. As faithful disciples of the one who died and rose again, we too commit ourselves to patient, faithful waiting, to speaking God’s truth, and to envisioning a renewed world truly realized. Especially in this busy, noisy season, when most of those around us have forgotten the need for patience, we take to heart James’ counsel: “be patient until the coming of the Lord.” Shutting your ears for the moment to the clamor of premature Christmas carols, I invite you to hear again James’ words to us, as Brahms set them in his great German Requiem (played for congregation on ipod):
So seid nun geduldig, liebe Brüder, Be patient therefore, brethren,
bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn. unto the coming of the Lord.
Siehe, ein Ackermann wartet Behold, the husbandman waiteth
auf die köstliche Frucht der Erde for the precious fruit of the earth,
und ist geduldig darüber, and has long patience for it,
bis er empfahe den Morgenregen und until he receive the morning and evening Abendregen. rain.
So seid geduldig. Jakobus 5:7 Be patient therefore. James 5:7
So seid nun geduldig. So therefore be patient. And by God’s grace, we are indeed patient, as we live in love until the coming of the Lord.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Water for Repentance
On the day after Thanksgiving, columnist Leonard Pitts announced good news: “An average of 17.7 percent of Americans were at times unable to feed themselves in the 12 months prior to September of this year.”1 How on earth could this be good news, Pitts asked. The answer: the percentage of hungry Americans was down from 18.5 percent at the end of 2009. Pitts went on to remind us that we don’t have to go to Kenya or Haiti to find hunger. In this season of “gorging on turkeys and hams and yams and greens, potatoes by the mound, dressing by the mountain, and groaning tables of puddings, pies, cookies, and cakes,” hunger endures in this country. Even though the lieutenant governor of South Carolina likened children who receive free and reduced price lunches to “stray animals you feed at your back door,” hunger endures. Even though we work hard at providing free meals to people, even though we participate in the distribution of food, hunger endures. Is it because of the recession that we have so much hunger? Well, we had hungry people before the recession. Are hungry people lazy or dishonest? Maybe a few are, but many hungry people are disabled, mentally ill, or poorly educated. Some have lost their jobs, some will never find a job in their community, and some have a job that doesn’t pay enough to live on. (Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickle and Dimed for more on that last reason.) And truth be told, any of us could be poor and hungry. Even middle-class people can lose their jobs and find themselves suddenly poor. Many of us are one health-care crisis away from poverty. Did you know that the majority of people who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical bills not covered by insurance?
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “What does this have to do with me? And what on earth do hungry poor people have to do with today’s Scripture lessons?” The answer is: everything! In our Old Testament reading from the prophet Isaiah, and in our psalm, we have a vision of what God intends our world to look like, of what a future of shalom, the well-being of all, might look like. In God’s shalom, all creation lives in harmony and peace. In God’s shalom that peace is a peace founded on justice, and especially justice for the poor. Hear Isaiah describing the ruler of God’s future: “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear,” i.e., he won’t be impressed by the trappings of high status or by elegant language, but “with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” The psalmist also looks forward to a future of harmony and peace: “There shall be abundance of peace till the moon shall be no more.” And the psalmist reminds us that the ruler of God’s peaceful kingdom will “rule your people righteously and the poor with equity,” and that “he shall defend the needy among the people; he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor.” Clearly the God whose word Isaiah proclaims has a special heart, a special preference, for the poor. Could these be the same poor people about whom Pitts was writing?
Our Gospel lesson strikes a slightly different note. Standing squarely within the prophetic tradition of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Ezekiel, and all the rest, John the Baptist also proclaims God’s word. But John proclaims that a great change in people’s lives is about to occur, that the ideal king, the messiah, the just ruler proclaimed by earlier prophets, is indeed about to appear. In preparation for the coming of God’s anointed one, John calls out, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” As a token of their repentance he charges people to be baptized, i.e., to be immersed in water, in a symbolic cleansing. John also has harsh words for the religious leadership – and we’ll hear a lot of this in Matthew’s Gospel. John warns them not to take refuge in their standing as children of Abraham, i.e., as heirs to God’s promises, but themselves repent and bear good fruit.
John was speaking to the people of his own time, to first-century Jews who were awaiting the coming of God’s anointed. Is he also speaking to us? Our collect for today asks for God’s grace to heed the warnings of the prophetic messengers whom God has sent and to forsake our own sins. So, yes, the Hebrew prophets, the prophets of our own day, and John the Baptizer are also addressing us. As a pastor and teacher, I especially hear John’s harsh words to the religious leaders as addressed to me, and I do challenge myself to repentance, and I ask God’s grace to bring forth the good fruit that God would have me bear. But ultimately John’s harsh words are addressed to all of us. All of us baptized Christians are also heirs to God’s covenant, along with the original descendants of Abraham. And like the religious leaders who first heard John’s accusations, we too cannot think that we are immune from any further attention to the demands of God. We too are called to repentance, and especially in this season, when we too wait eagerly for the appearing of the Prince of Peace.
“Repentance.” Now what does this word really mean? One thing it does not mean is a trip down the aisle at a revival. It does not mean solely renouncing evil in our baptisms and thinking we are done with repentance forever. No, repentance is a lifelong process, something we need to do continually. Nor does repentance mean putting ourselves on a guilt trip. Certainly, confession and absolution are good and necessary processes. But repentance really means turning around, changing direction, changing our mind-set, aligning ourselves with what God is up to in the world. And repentance is not only for individuals. Parishes, communities, even nations can repent. All of us, individually and collectively, can change course, can turn away from our own selfish desires, and begin heading in God’s direction.
How does such change come about? Ultimately, all change of heart is the work of the Holy Spirit within us. However, the Holy Spirit has many different ways of working. Sometimes we change as a result of new experiences, sometimes through getting new information, sometimes in response to prayer that God will show us the road that God wants us to travel. Most of us don’t need to “invite Christ into our lives” – we’ve probably already done that, or we wouldn’t be here today. What we do need to do is change how we think and how we act.
Can we change our thinking and our action with respect to issues of hunger in the U.S.? Dear God, you may say, I do believe that all your people, even your poorest people, should have enough to eat. How are you asking me to change my mind? What are you asking me to do? Everything you are currently doing, the Lord may say, and more! Yes, continue feeding my people in Loaves and Fishes. Yes, go across the street and help out at the Lutheran Social Services mobile food pantry. Yes, help people access benefits through the Ohio Benefit Bank. And there’s more. Consider educating yourself about hunger nationally, through organizations like Bread for the World, a Christian hunger advocacy organization. Some of you may have read in Friday’s paper, for example, that Congress passed the Child Nutrition bill to increase access to free and reduced-price meals for children. Bread for the World members educated themselves about the bill and then pressed their elected representatives to vote for it. The Ohio Hunger Alliance does the same kind of work on a state-wide level, also asking people to educate themselves about local hunger issues and to take appropriate political action. These are all good things to do, and as Christians we do these things because we understand ourselves as charged to partner with God in the bringing in of God’s future.
But one more thing I ask of you, the Lord says. Love those who are hungry as I love them. Bob Erickson was a volunteer at a free breakfast. Assigned coffee-pouring duty, he drifted from table to table “warming up cups for persons who often embody a ‘down and out’ slice of society,” people from shelters or, literally, off the streets and even from under bridges. Some were physically disabled, some had mental health issues. Few could get or hold a job. At one table, Bob tells us, he met Ben, “who had recently been freed after 25 years in prison. Gradually warming to my interest in talking with him, he told me a predictably sad story: he has no money for rent, is alienated from family, has lost his previous friends, and is aware of few resources in this or any other community, except a homeless shelter where he lives and this once-a-week service….” Yet Ben was confident he could make it, because at some point he had met someone who had accepted him unconditionally as a person, who had enabled him to feel truly loved and able to surmount the many obstacles in his life. Meeting Ben shook all of Bob’s assumptions. Bob realized that, important as our material support of people is, extending the hand of love and friendship, embodying Jesus for them, may be more important. “That someone cares enough to offer themselves -- their time, their attention, and most importantly, their heart -- may be the greatest gift we ever give…. Seeing beyond all that is obvious to criticize about the messiness of how they happen to be standing in front of us, can we accept them as they are as the starting point for who they might become? And by more than ‘bread alone,’ may we have the grace to love them and they, to accept it!”
Repent, change course, make a personal connection with the poor and needy. This is a tall order! Give us grace, O God, to heed the messages of your prophets, and to change our ways. Enable us by your grace to love those whom you love and to be the people you are calling us to be.
________________________________
1. “Amid amber waves of grain, hunger thrives,” Worthington Daily Globe, published November 26, 2010, accessed at http://www.dglobe.com/event/article/id/43356/, 11/29/2010.
2. Hunger Network in Ohio Newsletter, Fall 2010.
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “What does this have to do with me? And what on earth do hungry poor people have to do with today’s Scripture lessons?” The answer is: everything! In our Old Testament reading from the prophet Isaiah, and in our psalm, we have a vision of what God intends our world to look like, of what a future of shalom, the well-being of all, might look like. In God’s shalom, all creation lives in harmony and peace. In God’s shalom that peace is a peace founded on justice, and especially justice for the poor. Hear Isaiah describing the ruler of God’s future: “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear,” i.e., he won’t be impressed by the trappings of high status or by elegant language, but “with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” The psalmist also looks forward to a future of harmony and peace: “There shall be abundance of peace till the moon shall be no more.” And the psalmist reminds us that the ruler of God’s peaceful kingdom will “rule your people righteously and the poor with equity,” and that “he shall defend the needy among the people; he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor.” Clearly the God whose word Isaiah proclaims has a special heart, a special preference, for the poor. Could these be the same poor people about whom Pitts was writing?
Our Gospel lesson strikes a slightly different note. Standing squarely within the prophetic tradition of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Ezekiel, and all the rest, John the Baptist also proclaims God’s word. But John proclaims that a great change in people’s lives is about to occur, that the ideal king, the messiah, the just ruler proclaimed by earlier prophets, is indeed about to appear. In preparation for the coming of God’s anointed one, John calls out, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” As a token of their repentance he charges people to be baptized, i.e., to be immersed in water, in a symbolic cleansing. John also has harsh words for the religious leadership – and we’ll hear a lot of this in Matthew’s Gospel. John warns them not to take refuge in their standing as children of Abraham, i.e., as heirs to God’s promises, but themselves repent and bear good fruit.
John was speaking to the people of his own time, to first-century Jews who were awaiting the coming of God’s anointed. Is he also speaking to us? Our collect for today asks for God’s grace to heed the warnings of the prophetic messengers whom God has sent and to forsake our own sins. So, yes, the Hebrew prophets, the prophets of our own day, and John the Baptizer are also addressing us. As a pastor and teacher, I especially hear John’s harsh words to the religious leaders as addressed to me, and I do challenge myself to repentance, and I ask God’s grace to bring forth the good fruit that God would have me bear. But ultimately John’s harsh words are addressed to all of us. All of us baptized Christians are also heirs to God’s covenant, along with the original descendants of Abraham. And like the religious leaders who first heard John’s accusations, we too cannot think that we are immune from any further attention to the demands of God. We too are called to repentance, and especially in this season, when we too wait eagerly for the appearing of the Prince of Peace.
“Repentance.” Now what does this word really mean? One thing it does not mean is a trip down the aisle at a revival. It does not mean solely renouncing evil in our baptisms and thinking we are done with repentance forever. No, repentance is a lifelong process, something we need to do continually. Nor does repentance mean putting ourselves on a guilt trip. Certainly, confession and absolution are good and necessary processes. But repentance really means turning around, changing direction, changing our mind-set, aligning ourselves with what God is up to in the world. And repentance is not only for individuals. Parishes, communities, even nations can repent. All of us, individually and collectively, can change course, can turn away from our own selfish desires, and begin heading in God’s direction.
How does such change come about? Ultimately, all change of heart is the work of the Holy Spirit within us. However, the Holy Spirit has many different ways of working. Sometimes we change as a result of new experiences, sometimes through getting new information, sometimes in response to prayer that God will show us the road that God wants us to travel. Most of us don’t need to “invite Christ into our lives” – we’ve probably already done that, or we wouldn’t be here today. What we do need to do is change how we think and how we act.
Can we change our thinking and our action with respect to issues of hunger in the U.S.? Dear God, you may say, I do believe that all your people, even your poorest people, should have enough to eat. How are you asking me to change my mind? What are you asking me to do? Everything you are currently doing, the Lord may say, and more! Yes, continue feeding my people in Loaves and Fishes. Yes, go across the street and help out at the Lutheran Social Services mobile food pantry. Yes, help people access benefits through the Ohio Benefit Bank. And there’s more. Consider educating yourself about hunger nationally, through organizations like Bread for the World, a Christian hunger advocacy organization. Some of you may have read in Friday’s paper, for example, that Congress passed the Child Nutrition bill to increase access to free and reduced-price meals for children. Bread for the World members educated themselves about the bill and then pressed their elected representatives to vote for it. The Ohio Hunger Alliance does the same kind of work on a state-wide level, also asking people to educate themselves about local hunger issues and to take appropriate political action. These are all good things to do, and as Christians we do these things because we understand ourselves as charged to partner with God in the bringing in of God’s future.
But one more thing I ask of you, the Lord says. Love those who are hungry as I love them. Bob Erickson was a volunteer at a free breakfast. Assigned coffee-pouring duty, he drifted from table to table “warming up cups for persons who often embody a ‘down and out’ slice of society,” people from shelters or, literally, off the streets and even from under bridges. Some were physically disabled, some had mental health issues. Few could get or hold a job. At one table, Bob tells us, he met Ben, “who had recently been freed after 25 years in prison. Gradually warming to my interest in talking with him, he told me a predictably sad story: he has no money for rent, is alienated from family, has lost his previous friends, and is aware of few resources in this or any other community, except a homeless shelter where he lives and this once-a-week service….” Yet Ben was confident he could make it, because at some point he had met someone who had accepted him unconditionally as a person, who had enabled him to feel truly loved and able to surmount the many obstacles in his life. Meeting Ben shook all of Bob’s assumptions. Bob realized that, important as our material support of people is, extending the hand of love and friendship, embodying Jesus for them, may be more important. “That someone cares enough to offer themselves -- their time, their attention, and most importantly, their heart -- may be the greatest gift we ever give…. Seeing beyond all that is obvious to criticize about the messiness of how they happen to be standing in front of us, can we accept them as they are as the starting point for who they might become? And by more than ‘bread alone,’ may we have the grace to love them and they, to accept it!”
Repent, change course, make a personal connection with the poor and needy. This is a tall order! Give us grace, O God, to heed the messages of your prophets, and to change our ways. Enable us by your grace to love those whom you love and to be the people you are calling us to be.
________________________________
1. “Amid amber waves of grain, hunger thrives,” Worthington Daily Globe, published November 26, 2010, accessed at http://www.dglobe.com/event/article/id/43356/, 11/29/2010.
2. Hunger Network in Ohio Newsletter, Fall 2010.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Now in the Time of this Mortal Life
“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Do you know how much time you have left? No one does. Even so, all our advisors tell us, “Be ready, prepare, plan.” My financial advisor tells me that age 92 is the standard planning horizon. I recently saw an Allstate Insurance ad suggesting that now we’re even thinking out to age 100. So we take out life insurance. When we cross over into the second half-century, perhaps we buy long-term care insurance. We may have individual retirement annuities or tax-sheltered annuities. We contribute to, or perhaps draw from, the State Teachers Retirement System, the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, the Church Pension Fund, or company retirement plans. We draw up wills, lay out advanced directives, buy a cemetery plot or columbarium space, and convey our end of life wishes to our loved ones. It’s absolutely prudent and right to make all these arrangements. Should we make other plans too? Perhaps to gather the children and grandchildren and take that long-awaited trip? Perhaps to sell the big house and move into a smaller one, move closer to the children, or just get everything done by Christmas day! All these plans are also right and appropriate. And yet. And yet, despite all our preparation, advice, and plans, the truth is that we have no idea what the future holds for us, we have no idea when our life may suddenly change, and we have no idea how much time we have left.
Today’s Scripture lessons remind us that God invites us to make different kinds of preparations than those our financial advisors, attorneys, real estate agents, travel agents, or women’s magazines counsel. We don’t know how much time we personally have left, but as we begin another church year God invites us to prepare for God’s future. In contrast to the rest of our society, now in the midst of the mad rush to December 25th, we are invited to stop, to take a breath, and to look with hope towards another future.
We get a glimpse of God’s future, a promise of the consummation of God’s rule at the end of the age, in the stirring reading from Isaiah. In God’s future, the prophet assures us, all people and nations will be united, and all will live according to God’s law. In words that ring down the centuries, the prophet also reassures us that God’s future is a future of peace: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” When soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan, when civilians are dying in the busses and markets of Pakistan, Israel, and Palestine, when civil war still plagues Sudan, when people are murdered on college campuses, don’t you cry out to God to bring that peaceable reign into being right now? And what is the prophet’s reply: “O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord.” In whatever time we have left, we too are invited to pursue peace, even as we continue to hope that God’s peaceable kingdom will come soon.
And hope we must. For Jesus sternly warns us in today’s Gospel reading that we do not know when God will fully consummate God’s plan. During this church year, our Gospel lessons will come mostly from the Gospel according to Matthew, a gospel written especially to convey a sense of hope to a struggling Christian community. In today’s passage Jesus is near Jerusalem, near the end of his own earthly ministry. Having just warned his disciples about the destruction of the temple, he now cautions them, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Throughout the centuries, and still even today, people have claimed to know when the “end of the world” will occur. Think of the many cartoons you have seen of the bearded figure, perhaps wearing a sandwich board, exhorting people to repent because the world is about to end. Think of the Jim Joneses and David Koreshes of our own era who have led so many astray: Think of those who preach the “Rapture.”
We certainly don’t know when Christ will come again, nor when God will bring in God’s future. Nor do we know when our own lives will change – in an instant – despite all our planning. Aren’t we all a heartbeat away from disaster? September 11th, the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the recent fires in California. And then there are the tragedies in our own lives. In February, 1995, my nephew Matthew had just turned 18. As he was making plans for his first year at Penn State, he was struck by a deadly leukemia and died that July. A few years back in Athens a 16-year old got behind the wheel after having had too much to drink at an unsupervised party. She missed a turn on a country road and killed her two 14 year old passengers. All of you could tell similar stories. Our lives, our current comfortable lives, truly hang by a thread.
We know that our lives are uncertain, and that we cannot know what the future holds. But as Christians, we do not despair. We don’t know when God will act, or when our lives may change, but we continue to live in hope, gratitude, and expectation. We live in hope, because God has already entered into our world once. We live in hope, because we know that we have been redeemed in Jesus’ death. We live in hope, because we have been given a foretaste of the life to come in the resurrection, a foretaste of what God has in mind not only for us personally, but eventually for the entire world. Because of this hope, we live differently from those who live without it. Because of this hope, we are grateful for Christ’s first coming, and we wait patiently for Christ’s second coming. In this middle time, as we wait for God’s future to come fully, we remain awake and alert to what God is calling us to do now, “now in the time of this mortal life.”
How do we do that? Let me suggest a few ways. First, we can pray about the mission of this parish. We can ask God to show us what God is inviting this parish to do as a parish. In what new ministries might God be inviting this parish to participate? Are there ways in which the resources of this parish can be used to bring God’s future nearer? Are there ministries for which you might take responsibility, or in which you should be participating?
Second, we remain alert to God’s presence in the world through joining the weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection. On Sundays, when we join with the rest of the Christian community to hear God’s word and partake of Christ’s Body and Blood, we are nourished and even transformed by Christ. And especially in this season of Advent, we can find ways to listen for, and attend to, God’s daily invitation to us to deepen our spiritual lives and become more attentive to God’s presence in our own lives. For some of you, the discipline of lectio divina, in which we meditatively read Scripture, might be a useful discipline. For others of you, daily prayer at night, in which you review the day and give it to God, might be a way a remaining more alert to God’s presence in your life.
Some of you know of Episcopal priest and spiritual writer Barbara Crafton. She’s a frequent visitor at parishes and retreat centers. She also writes e-mail reflections on the spiritual life and the weekly lections. In one e-mo, as she calls them, she described how people in her home parish gather to read daily Morning and Evening Prayer. Beginning in Advent, she tells us,
"We will husband our store of quietness, care for it lovingly, knowing that much conspires against it outside the walls of the little church. Advent will be a time of such husbanding for many people, a time when attention is paid to what the spirit needs to greet the little Prince of Peace, soon to come among us once again. This doesn't just happen to us. We have to show up for it. If we want peace, we have to go where it can be found. Where is that for you? In prayer with others? In prayer by yourself?... Now is a good time to consider this, as the old year breathes its last and a fresh new one begins."1
Advent is not a passive season. God invites us to be alert and intentionally prepare for God’s coming. God invites us to prepare for the celebration of God’s birth in Jesus, to prepare for God’s coming at the end of the age, and to prepare for God’s coming to us in the busyness of our days. Are you preparing for God’s coming? We may not know when God will come. We may not know how much time we have left. But we are invited to stay alert, awake, and ready for God’s appearing in our lives. And so we pray,
"Lord, we watch, we wait,
we look, we long for you.
Dispel the clouds and darkness
and awaken us to your glory,
that we may walk in your light,
through Jesus Christ our Lord."2 Amen
1. Barbara Crafton, “The Almost Daily eMo,” November 26,2007.
2. David Adam, Clouds and Glory, Morehouse, Harrisburg, PA, 2001, p. 5.
Today’s Scripture lessons remind us that God invites us to make different kinds of preparations than those our financial advisors, attorneys, real estate agents, travel agents, or women’s magazines counsel. We don’t know how much time we personally have left, but as we begin another church year God invites us to prepare for God’s future. In contrast to the rest of our society, now in the midst of the mad rush to December 25th, we are invited to stop, to take a breath, and to look with hope towards another future.
We get a glimpse of God’s future, a promise of the consummation of God’s rule at the end of the age, in the stirring reading from Isaiah. In God’s future, the prophet assures us, all people and nations will be united, and all will live according to God’s law. In words that ring down the centuries, the prophet also reassures us that God’s future is a future of peace: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” When soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan, when civilians are dying in the busses and markets of Pakistan, Israel, and Palestine, when civil war still plagues Sudan, when people are murdered on college campuses, don’t you cry out to God to bring that peaceable reign into being right now? And what is the prophet’s reply: “O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord.” In whatever time we have left, we too are invited to pursue peace, even as we continue to hope that God’s peaceable kingdom will come soon.
And hope we must. For Jesus sternly warns us in today’s Gospel reading that we do not know when God will fully consummate God’s plan. During this church year, our Gospel lessons will come mostly from the Gospel according to Matthew, a gospel written especially to convey a sense of hope to a struggling Christian community. In today’s passage Jesus is near Jerusalem, near the end of his own earthly ministry. Having just warned his disciples about the destruction of the temple, he now cautions them, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Throughout the centuries, and still even today, people have claimed to know when the “end of the world” will occur. Think of the many cartoons you have seen of the bearded figure, perhaps wearing a sandwich board, exhorting people to repent because the world is about to end. Think of the Jim Joneses and David Koreshes of our own era who have led so many astray: Think of those who preach the “Rapture.”
We certainly don’t know when Christ will come again, nor when God will bring in God’s future. Nor do we know when our own lives will change – in an instant – despite all our planning. Aren’t we all a heartbeat away from disaster? September 11th, the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the recent fires in California. And then there are the tragedies in our own lives. In February, 1995, my nephew Matthew had just turned 18. As he was making plans for his first year at Penn State, he was struck by a deadly leukemia and died that July. A few years back in Athens a 16-year old got behind the wheel after having had too much to drink at an unsupervised party. She missed a turn on a country road and killed her two 14 year old passengers. All of you could tell similar stories. Our lives, our current comfortable lives, truly hang by a thread.
We know that our lives are uncertain, and that we cannot know what the future holds. But as Christians, we do not despair. We don’t know when God will act, or when our lives may change, but we continue to live in hope, gratitude, and expectation. We live in hope, because God has already entered into our world once. We live in hope, because we know that we have been redeemed in Jesus’ death. We live in hope, because we have been given a foretaste of the life to come in the resurrection, a foretaste of what God has in mind not only for us personally, but eventually for the entire world. Because of this hope, we live differently from those who live without it. Because of this hope, we are grateful for Christ’s first coming, and we wait patiently for Christ’s second coming. In this middle time, as we wait for God’s future to come fully, we remain awake and alert to what God is calling us to do now, “now in the time of this mortal life.”
How do we do that? Let me suggest a few ways. First, we can pray about the mission of this parish. We can ask God to show us what God is inviting this parish to do as a parish. In what new ministries might God be inviting this parish to participate? Are there ways in which the resources of this parish can be used to bring God’s future nearer? Are there ministries for which you might take responsibility, or in which you should be participating?
Second, we remain alert to God’s presence in the world through joining the weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection. On Sundays, when we join with the rest of the Christian community to hear God’s word and partake of Christ’s Body and Blood, we are nourished and even transformed by Christ. And especially in this season of Advent, we can find ways to listen for, and attend to, God’s daily invitation to us to deepen our spiritual lives and become more attentive to God’s presence in our own lives. For some of you, the discipline of lectio divina, in which we meditatively read Scripture, might be a useful discipline. For others of you, daily prayer at night, in which you review the day and give it to God, might be a way a remaining more alert to God’s presence in your life.
Some of you know of Episcopal priest and spiritual writer Barbara Crafton. She’s a frequent visitor at parishes and retreat centers. She also writes e-mail reflections on the spiritual life and the weekly lections. In one e-mo, as she calls them, she described how people in her home parish gather to read daily Morning and Evening Prayer. Beginning in Advent, she tells us,
"We will husband our store of quietness, care for it lovingly, knowing that much conspires against it outside the walls of the little church. Advent will be a time of such husbanding for many people, a time when attention is paid to what the spirit needs to greet the little Prince of Peace, soon to come among us once again. This doesn't just happen to us. We have to show up for it. If we want peace, we have to go where it can be found. Where is that for you? In prayer with others? In prayer by yourself?... Now is a good time to consider this, as the old year breathes its last and a fresh new one begins."1
Advent is not a passive season. God invites us to be alert and intentionally prepare for God’s coming. God invites us to prepare for the celebration of God’s birth in Jesus, to prepare for God’s coming at the end of the age, and to prepare for God’s coming to us in the busyness of our days. Are you preparing for God’s coming? We may not know when God will come. We may not know how much time we have left. But we are invited to stay alert, awake, and ready for God’s appearing in our lives. And so we pray,
"Lord, we watch, we wait,
we look, we long for you.
Dispel the clouds and darkness
and awaken us to your glory,
that we may walk in your light,
through Jesus Christ our Lord."2 Amen
1. Barbara Crafton, “The Almost Daily eMo,” November 26,2007.
2. David Adam, Clouds and Glory, Morehouse, Harrisburg, PA, 2001, p. 5.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Kingdom of God's Beloved Son
It’s the last Sunday after Pentecost, the very end of the church year. So why does our church calendar tell us that we are celebrating the feast of Christ the King? Americans, understandably, have negative images of kings. Consider how the writers of the Declaration of Independence characterized George III of England: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” The writers lay out eighteen ways in which the king has oppressed the colonists, allude to the ways they have attempted to redress these ills, and finally conclude that, “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” And indeed Americans have not pledged allegiance to any king since the Declaration was signed.
Nor is the feast of Christ the King in any of our old prayer books. The old lectionary in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer lists no such feast. Indeed, if we were still using the 1928 prayer book today we would be observing the Sunday Next Before Advent and would be hearing the story from John’s Gospel about the feeding of the five thousand. So where does this feast come from? Is it some ancient observance that Episcopalians only discovered when we revised our prayer book in the 1970s and adopted the Revised Common Lectionary? Actually, as an observance Christ the King only dates from the Italy of 1925. In a response to the growing power of Fascism in Italy, and especially to the government of Benito Mussolini, Pope Pius XI, instituted the feast of Christ the King. For nations wracked by one war and facing another, the day proclaimed God’s reign over the entire world. The day also reminded Christians that their allegiance was to a divine ruler and not to earthly political leaders. In concluding our liturgical year with the acknowledgement of Christ as our true ruler, we now join with the Roman Catholics, as well as Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists, in acknowledging the Lordship of Christ in our lives.
O.K. I get it. But if Christ is my king, my lord, my true ruler, the one to whom I owe primary allegiance, why do we hear this Gospel reading? Aren’t there others that better showcase Jesus’ majesty? Wasn’t Jesus truly regal when he calmed the sea and commanded the winds? Wasn’t his power obvious when he fed the multitudes with bread and fish? Surely he showed his authority when he drove demons out of people and healed them from every imaginable illness. And whenever he debated with the religious leadership, the greater depth of his wisdom was clearly evident. Why this Gospel, that shows Jesus at the lowest point of his life, his humiliation on a cross? Isn’t this Gospel reading more suitable for Good Friday?
Well, certainly we read the whole Passion story in Holy Week, beginning with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, and going right through to his death on the Cross on Good Friday. As I wrestled with today’s readings, it became clear to me that the Church lets us hear this story again to drive home to us just what kind of Lord we actually have, of what kind of king we are actually subjects. The Gospel of Luke is a Gospel of reversals and irony, and in a wonderfully ironic touch, it is those who here mock and reject Jesus who point to Jesus’ true identity. To begin with, Jesus is mocked by those in political authority. Shortly before the scene of today’s reading, Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, a man dependent on political power and the threat of violence. Jesus had been accused of saying that he was the Messiah, God’s anointed one. Thinking in political terms, Pilate mockingly asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus’ answer? “You say so.” Even so, Pilate had the inscription “This is the King of the Jews” put on the cross. But Jesus was not a political ruler.
Secondly, the religious leaders mock Jesus: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah….” But Jesus was not a religious leader: he did not found a new rabbinical school or Jewish sect. Those welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday might have been expecting him to take up arms and free Jerusalem from the hated Romans. Indeed some think that Judas betrayed Jesus in the hope of stirring up a military rebellion. However, Jesus was clearly not called to be a military leader. And so, the sneering soldiers similarly denigrate him. As they cast lots for his clothes, they taunt him, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Even the first thief, who thinks only of himself, mocks Jesus: : “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
Those who mock and taunt Jesus show us clearly that Jesus is no George III. Jesus is a different kind of king from any we could have imagined. No, Jesus is not a king in political, military, or even religious terms. What Jesus models for us is self-giving, sacrificial love. Unlike the tyrants of his own or even our world, Jesus models the servant-shepherd leader foretold by God in the prophecy of Jeremiah, which we heard in our Old Testament reading. Letting go of any possibility of political, military, or religious power, Jesus offers himself up for the life of the world. At the point of death, Jesus reigns from the cross, giving himself up for us, forgiving us, and assuring us of God’s deep love for us.
What would the kingdom that Jesus announced look like in our world? What would our lives be like if Jesus ruled the nations, instead of Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, or even David Cameron or Barak Obama? Unquestionably, every aspect of our lives would be different. We would have peace instead of endless war. Gone would be exploitation of others and human trafficking, the modern-day equivalent of slavery. Instead of a vengeful, punitive system of justice, we would have mercy and forgiveness. Adequate healthcare would be available to all, instead of only to the fortunately wealthy few. Walls between ethnic groups and races would cease to exist, and all would be included within our communities. When God’s Kingdom comes, the kingdom we pray for every time we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we would truly know shalom, the well being of all humankind, and indeed of all creation. This is our hope, this is what we proclaim, and this is what we pray for with all our hearts. The shalom and reconciliation of all creation is the place to which everything that we have heard, preached, and said this year has led us. This is the point of the whole story: that God’s Kingdom, inaugurated by the birth, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, would come to full realization.
And what of ourselves? By God’s grace, we have been brought into, transferred to this kingdom governed by Christ. We are now citizens of a different world, not our own. In the world of which we are now citizens, we know that our hope lies not in the agendas of Democrats or Republicans, of capitalists or socialists or communists, of management or labor, of democracy or theocracy. Just as we learned last week that no human monument is forever, so this week our texts proclaim that no human system is forever. None can claim ultimate allegiance from us. Every system ultimately fails. Only Christ is truly sovereign. Only Christ has the authority to claim us as his subjects.
As Christ’s subjects, we are invited to live as he lived. We are invited to see that at the heart of everything is a God who deeply, truly, passionately loves us. We discover with joy that Jesus is the Ultimate Reality who should be our Ultimate Concern. We celebrate Jesus not as a distant tyrant, a George III across a three thousand mile-wide ocean from his subjects, but as a near, dear, close presence in our lives – as close as a prayer. We celebrate Jesus as lover of the world and all that is in it. We celebrate Jesus as pure Mother/Father love, as supreme healer and transformer of life. We celebrate Jesus, God’s anointed one, who through his death and resurrection takes away the sin of the world for all and forever.
And so as we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, and as we give thanks to God for blessing us with the gift of inclusion in his kingdom of grace, let us pray in the words of St. Teresa of Avila, “We are all vassals of the King. May it please his Majesty that, like brave soldiers, we may look only where the banner of our King is flying, and thus follow his will.” Amen.
Nor is the feast of Christ the King in any of our old prayer books. The old lectionary in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer lists no such feast. Indeed, if we were still using the 1928 prayer book today we would be observing the Sunday Next Before Advent and would be hearing the story from John’s Gospel about the feeding of the five thousand. So where does this feast come from? Is it some ancient observance that Episcopalians only discovered when we revised our prayer book in the 1970s and adopted the Revised Common Lectionary? Actually, as an observance Christ the King only dates from the Italy of 1925. In a response to the growing power of Fascism in Italy, and especially to the government of Benito Mussolini, Pope Pius XI, instituted the feast of Christ the King. For nations wracked by one war and facing another, the day proclaimed God’s reign over the entire world. The day also reminded Christians that their allegiance was to a divine ruler and not to earthly political leaders. In concluding our liturgical year with the acknowledgement of Christ as our true ruler, we now join with the Roman Catholics, as well as Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists, in acknowledging the Lordship of Christ in our lives.
O.K. I get it. But if Christ is my king, my lord, my true ruler, the one to whom I owe primary allegiance, why do we hear this Gospel reading? Aren’t there others that better showcase Jesus’ majesty? Wasn’t Jesus truly regal when he calmed the sea and commanded the winds? Wasn’t his power obvious when he fed the multitudes with bread and fish? Surely he showed his authority when he drove demons out of people and healed them from every imaginable illness. And whenever he debated with the religious leadership, the greater depth of his wisdom was clearly evident. Why this Gospel, that shows Jesus at the lowest point of his life, his humiliation on a cross? Isn’t this Gospel reading more suitable for Good Friday?
Well, certainly we read the whole Passion story in Holy Week, beginning with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, and going right through to his death on the Cross on Good Friday. As I wrestled with today’s readings, it became clear to me that the Church lets us hear this story again to drive home to us just what kind of Lord we actually have, of what kind of king we are actually subjects. The Gospel of Luke is a Gospel of reversals and irony, and in a wonderfully ironic touch, it is those who here mock and reject Jesus who point to Jesus’ true identity. To begin with, Jesus is mocked by those in political authority. Shortly before the scene of today’s reading, Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, a man dependent on political power and the threat of violence. Jesus had been accused of saying that he was the Messiah, God’s anointed one. Thinking in political terms, Pilate mockingly asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus’ answer? “You say so.” Even so, Pilate had the inscription “This is the King of the Jews” put on the cross. But Jesus was not a political ruler.
Secondly, the religious leaders mock Jesus: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah….” But Jesus was not a religious leader: he did not found a new rabbinical school or Jewish sect. Those welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday might have been expecting him to take up arms and free Jerusalem from the hated Romans. Indeed some think that Judas betrayed Jesus in the hope of stirring up a military rebellion. However, Jesus was clearly not called to be a military leader. And so, the sneering soldiers similarly denigrate him. As they cast lots for his clothes, they taunt him, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Even the first thief, who thinks only of himself, mocks Jesus: : “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
Those who mock and taunt Jesus show us clearly that Jesus is no George III. Jesus is a different kind of king from any we could have imagined. No, Jesus is not a king in political, military, or even religious terms. What Jesus models for us is self-giving, sacrificial love. Unlike the tyrants of his own or even our world, Jesus models the servant-shepherd leader foretold by God in the prophecy of Jeremiah, which we heard in our Old Testament reading. Letting go of any possibility of political, military, or religious power, Jesus offers himself up for the life of the world. At the point of death, Jesus reigns from the cross, giving himself up for us, forgiving us, and assuring us of God’s deep love for us.
What would the kingdom that Jesus announced look like in our world? What would our lives be like if Jesus ruled the nations, instead of Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, or even David Cameron or Barak Obama? Unquestionably, every aspect of our lives would be different. We would have peace instead of endless war. Gone would be exploitation of others and human trafficking, the modern-day equivalent of slavery. Instead of a vengeful, punitive system of justice, we would have mercy and forgiveness. Adequate healthcare would be available to all, instead of only to the fortunately wealthy few. Walls between ethnic groups and races would cease to exist, and all would be included within our communities. When God’s Kingdom comes, the kingdom we pray for every time we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we would truly know shalom, the well being of all humankind, and indeed of all creation. This is our hope, this is what we proclaim, and this is what we pray for with all our hearts. The shalom and reconciliation of all creation is the place to which everything that we have heard, preached, and said this year has led us. This is the point of the whole story: that God’s Kingdom, inaugurated by the birth, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, would come to full realization.
And what of ourselves? By God’s grace, we have been brought into, transferred to this kingdom governed by Christ. We are now citizens of a different world, not our own. In the world of which we are now citizens, we know that our hope lies not in the agendas of Democrats or Republicans, of capitalists or socialists or communists, of management or labor, of democracy or theocracy. Just as we learned last week that no human monument is forever, so this week our texts proclaim that no human system is forever. None can claim ultimate allegiance from us. Every system ultimately fails. Only Christ is truly sovereign. Only Christ has the authority to claim us as his subjects.
As Christ’s subjects, we are invited to live as he lived. We are invited to see that at the heart of everything is a God who deeply, truly, passionately loves us. We discover with joy that Jesus is the Ultimate Reality who should be our Ultimate Concern. We celebrate Jesus not as a distant tyrant, a George III across a three thousand mile-wide ocean from his subjects, but as a near, dear, close presence in our lives – as close as a prayer. We celebrate Jesus as lover of the world and all that is in it. We celebrate Jesus as pure Mother/Father love, as supreme healer and transformer of life. We celebrate Jesus, God’s anointed one, who through his death and resurrection takes away the sin of the world for all and forever.
And so as we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, and as we give thanks to God for blessing us with the gift of inclusion in his kingdom of grace, let us pray in the words of St. Teresa of Avila, “We are all vassals of the King. May it please his Majesty that, like brave soldiers, we may look only where the banner of our King is flying, and thus follow his will.” Amen.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
New Heavens and a New Earth
Since I am older than dirt, I actually studied the classics of English poetry in high school. I think it must have been sometime during my sophomore year that I read Shelley’s haunting poem, “Ozymandias.” The poem was written in 1818, in response, some think, to the recent arrival in London of a colossal statue of Ramses II, the great pharaoh of ancient Egypt. How many of you remember it?
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I was reminded of Shelley’s poem, and of so many other great deserted statues and monuments, as I tried to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” today’s Scripture readings. In our Gospel lesson in particular, Jesus, now just days away from his own death, reminds his disciples and us that one of the greatest buildings of the ancient world, the great second temple in Jerusalem, is about to suffer the same fate as the statue of Ramses: “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” And we know that in 70 AD, that vast temple complex, and indeed all of Jerusalem, was reduced to rubble by the Roman armies. Four centuries later the great monuments of ancient Rome suffered the same fate. Despite our pride, despite our trust in earthly power, nothing lasts. All eventually is lost – that is certain.
Actually as we think about the world and our place in it, there are, as Daniel Clendenin reminds us, four different kinds of sure and certain losses.1 The first loss is the one we know best, that of our own bodies. Whether you’re a Haitian male, whose life expectancy at birth is now about 30, or a Japanese female, whose life expectancy is over 85, “mortality rates are 100% certain.” Secondly, we know that civilizations die. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Incas, the Aztecs – all are gone with scarcely a trace. And more: with the climate changes, overpopulation, famine, and wars that coming centuries will surely see, many, if not most, of the cultures in today’s world will also vanish without a trace. The end of the earth as we know it is also sure and certain. Indeed, many scientists believe that the earth is now about middle-aged, and will be incinerated by the sun in about 5 billion years. As particle physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne warns, “humanity and all forms of carbon-based life will prove a transient episode in the history of the cosmos.” Finally, the universe itself may disappear. Astronomers tell us that our expanding universe will at some point collapse in on itself.
And what comes after that? Here is the good news! Christians believe that the end of humanity and of the cosmos as we know it is not the final end. We believe in God’s promises to us. There is more to God’s plan. In today’s lections, we hear God’s promise clearly in the prophecy of Isaiah. Using a restored Jerusalem as the symbol for an entirely new creation, God promises us that “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” God promises us a restored creation in which there will be no more lives cut short, no more weeping, no more loss or plunder. God promises us a peaceable kingdom, in which all the animals and human beings will live together in harmony. God promises an earth in which “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” In the same way, Jesus acknowledges the disruption and pain that the disciples will face in the coming days. Nevertheless, in a passage following today’s Gospel reading, he commands them to “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” And again, Paul reminds the Christians in Thessaloniki to continue valiantly doing the Lord’s work, even as they wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Do we believe any of this? Do we believe God’s promises of a restored creation? Whenever you read Morning or Evening Prayer or witness a baptism or confirmation, you repeat in the words of the Apostles Creed, that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Sunday by Sunday, we affirm in the words of the Nicene Creed that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” And in all times and places we pray in the words of the Lord’s Prayer that God’s kingdom will come, that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Every time we say any of these words, we affirm our belief in God’s promises that justice will be done, that wrongs will be righted, that all will live in peace and health, and that creation will be restored and renewed. Blessed hope, blessed assurance!
How and when will all this happen? We have no idea. The psalmist reminds us that “a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.” Truly we are in the realm of mystery here. What should we do as we wait for the unfolding of God’s plan, as we continue to hope for the fulfillment of God’s promises? Here, my brothers and sisters, we are on firmer ground. As Paul told the Thessalonian Christians, we are to pursue conscientiously the work God has given us to do, and we are never to “weary in doing what is right,” as we ourselves partner with God in the bringing in of God’s kingdom.
What does that mean for us here in Gallipolis? Today we give especial thanks for what we have inherited in this region. We are grateful to God for the beautiful land with which God has gifted us, for the mountains, the rivers, the fertile land. We are grateful for the history of the people here, for the music, crafts, language, literature, and arts of this place. We are grateful for the strong communities of faith in this region. At the same time, we know that we also have a responsibility to care for this land and its people. While we wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises to us, we are called to be good stewards of the resources of this region. We pray that God will guide us and our leaders in decisions to be made about energy, mining, and agriculture. We are also called to be mindful of the needs of God’s people. Perhaps we in this parish, as relatively well educated, middle class people, are called to be “bridges,” as one speaker put it, for those who are still mired in the poverty of this region. In our Loaves and Fishes dinners and in our diaper distributions, we provide material help to some of those in need. To what else is God calling us? What else does our community ask of us?
And above all that, we are called to remember that even as we are “placed among things that are passing away,” we are to trust in God’s promises. We may not know how and when they will be fulfilled, nor do we know what we may have to give up in order for God’s will to be done. In a lovely essay in a collection entitled Heaven, Barbara Brown Taylor tells of the death of her father. He was having a hard time dying. As she lay next to him one Sunday, she whispered, “You’re having to let it all go, aren’t you? All the places you haven’t traveled yet, all the places you’ve been. Your first girlfriend, your favorite chair, your prize students, your grandsons…. Everything that makes you you, you’re having to let go now. Oh, Poppa…. It has to be so hard.” After her father’s death, Taylor began to cultivate what she called a “radical trust in God.” Though less attached to specific beliefs about heaven, she nevertheless has an “enduring sense” that “everything will be revealed in the hereafter.” She now hopes that God’s judgment will reveal not only all her shortcomings but also what she may have done right in her lifetime. Most important, she tells us, “in the end my highest hope … is simply to be rescued when my time comes – plucked from the roadside where I have fallen, struck dumb by all there is to love and grieve in this world – and gathered into God’s own safety, whatever that turns out to mean. I am willing to forego the details, as long as I know whose lap I am in.”2
As we confront the mystery of the end of all things, including ourselves, and as we embrace the hope of God’s restoration of creation, of new heavens and a new earth, we continue to trust that God is working out God’s purposes, and that, in God’s good time, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
1. In “Heaven: Our ‘Enduring Fascination,’” The Journey with Jesus – Notes to Myself," http://www.journeywithjesus.net, accessed November 11, 2010.
2. Barbara Brown Taylor, “Leaving Myself Behind,” in Heaven, Roger Ferlo, ed. (New York: Seabury, 2007), 11-12
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I was reminded of Shelley’s poem, and of so many other great deserted statues and monuments, as I tried to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” today’s Scripture readings. In our Gospel lesson in particular, Jesus, now just days away from his own death, reminds his disciples and us that one of the greatest buildings of the ancient world, the great second temple in Jerusalem, is about to suffer the same fate as the statue of Ramses: “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” And we know that in 70 AD, that vast temple complex, and indeed all of Jerusalem, was reduced to rubble by the Roman armies. Four centuries later the great monuments of ancient Rome suffered the same fate. Despite our pride, despite our trust in earthly power, nothing lasts. All eventually is lost – that is certain.
Actually as we think about the world and our place in it, there are, as Daniel Clendenin reminds us, four different kinds of sure and certain losses.1 The first loss is the one we know best, that of our own bodies. Whether you’re a Haitian male, whose life expectancy at birth is now about 30, or a Japanese female, whose life expectancy is over 85, “mortality rates are 100% certain.” Secondly, we know that civilizations die. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Incas, the Aztecs – all are gone with scarcely a trace. And more: with the climate changes, overpopulation, famine, and wars that coming centuries will surely see, many, if not most, of the cultures in today’s world will also vanish without a trace. The end of the earth as we know it is also sure and certain. Indeed, many scientists believe that the earth is now about middle-aged, and will be incinerated by the sun in about 5 billion years. As particle physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne warns, “humanity and all forms of carbon-based life will prove a transient episode in the history of the cosmos.” Finally, the universe itself may disappear. Astronomers tell us that our expanding universe will at some point collapse in on itself.
And what comes after that? Here is the good news! Christians believe that the end of humanity and of the cosmos as we know it is not the final end. We believe in God’s promises to us. There is more to God’s plan. In today’s lections, we hear God’s promise clearly in the prophecy of Isaiah. Using a restored Jerusalem as the symbol for an entirely new creation, God promises us that “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” God promises us a restored creation in which there will be no more lives cut short, no more weeping, no more loss or plunder. God promises us a peaceable kingdom, in which all the animals and human beings will live together in harmony. God promises an earth in which “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” In the same way, Jesus acknowledges the disruption and pain that the disciples will face in the coming days. Nevertheless, in a passage following today’s Gospel reading, he commands them to “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” And again, Paul reminds the Christians in Thessaloniki to continue valiantly doing the Lord’s work, even as they wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Do we believe any of this? Do we believe God’s promises of a restored creation? Whenever you read Morning or Evening Prayer or witness a baptism or confirmation, you repeat in the words of the Apostles Creed, that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Sunday by Sunday, we affirm in the words of the Nicene Creed that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” And in all times and places we pray in the words of the Lord’s Prayer that God’s kingdom will come, that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Every time we say any of these words, we affirm our belief in God’s promises that justice will be done, that wrongs will be righted, that all will live in peace and health, and that creation will be restored and renewed. Blessed hope, blessed assurance!
How and when will all this happen? We have no idea. The psalmist reminds us that “a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.” Truly we are in the realm of mystery here. What should we do as we wait for the unfolding of God’s plan, as we continue to hope for the fulfillment of God’s promises? Here, my brothers and sisters, we are on firmer ground. As Paul told the Thessalonian Christians, we are to pursue conscientiously the work God has given us to do, and we are never to “weary in doing what is right,” as we ourselves partner with God in the bringing in of God’s kingdom.
What does that mean for us here in Gallipolis? Today we give especial thanks for what we have inherited in this region. We are grateful to God for the beautiful land with which God has gifted us, for the mountains, the rivers, the fertile land. We are grateful for the history of the people here, for the music, crafts, language, literature, and arts of this place. We are grateful for the strong communities of faith in this region. At the same time, we know that we also have a responsibility to care for this land and its people. While we wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises to us, we are called to be good stewards of the resources of this region. We pray that God will guide us and our leaders in decisions to be made about energy, mining, and agriculture. We are also called to be mindful of the needs of God’s people. Perhaps we in this parish, as relatively well educated, middle class people, are called to be “bridges,” as one speaker put it, for those who are still mired in the poverty of this region. In our Loaves and Fishes dinners and in our diaper distributions, we provide material help to some of those in need. To what else is God calling us? What else does our community ask of us?
And above all that, we are called to remember that even as we are “placed among things that are passing away,” we are to trust in God’s promises. We may not know how and when they will be fulfilled, nor do we know what we may have to give up in order for God’s will to be done. In a lovely essay in a collection entitled Heaven, Barbara Brown Taylor tells of the death of her father. He was having a hard time dying. As she lay next to him one Sunday, she whispered, “You’re having to let it all go, aren’t you? All the places you haven’t traveled yet, all the places you’ve been. Your first girlfriend, your favorite chair, your prize students, your grandsons…. Everything that makes you you, you’re having to let go now. Oh, Poppa…. It has to be so hard.” After her father’s death, Taylor began to cultivate what she called a “radical trust in God.” Though less attached to specific beliefs about heaven, she nevertheless has an “enduring sense” that “everything will be revealed in the hereafter.” She now hopes that God’s judgment will reveal not only all her shortcomings but also what she may have done right in her lifetime. Most important, she tells us, “in the end my highest hope … is simply to be rescued when my time comes – plucked from the roadside where I have fallen, struck dumb by all there is to love and grieve in this world – and gathered into God’s own safety, whatever that turns out to mean. I am willing to forego the details, as long as I know whose lap I am in.”2
As we confront the mystery of the end of all things, including ourselves, and as we embrace the hope of God’s restoration of creation, of new heavens and a new earth, we continue to trust that God is working out God’s purposes, and that, in God’s good time, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
1. In “Heaven: Our ‘Enduring Fascination,’” The Journey with Jesus – Notes to Myself," http://www.journeywithjesus.net, accessed November 11, 2010.
2. Barbara Brown Taylor, “Leaving Myself Behind,” in Heaven, Roger Ferlo, ed. (New York: Seabury, 2007), 11-12
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